


an exercise in setting

by sprinkledonut



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel/Dean Winchester Drabble(s), Drabble Collection, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-28 06:54:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11412597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprinkledonut/pseuds/sprinkledonut
Summary: a collection of short supernatural fics, not long enough to be posted on their own. varying subjects and places in canon.





	1. bobby's porch

**Author's Note:**

> this is me working on my writing, trying to expand to different settings and such. each chapter is a different idea, or place, or whatnot. 
> 
> there shouldn't be any warnings needed, but if they come up i'll tag them.

Castiel showed up once with a cigarette between his lips, fingers curled around the flame he tried to flick on. Eventually it caught and he exhaled before turning to Dean and Sam with a bored tilt of his head.

"Can't you just," Dean said, snapping his fingers, "instead of a lighter? Actually, do you even breathe?" 

He got a shrug. Castiel tapped the ashes away from him and said, "Why'd you call?" This was when Cas was more of a vague asshole instead of a sad asshole, back when nothing mattered to a vessel ran by someone else. 

They filled him in on the case and Dean forgot all about the whole thing until now. Dean's sitting down beside Cas on Bobby's rickety porch steps, shoving his way into space Cas reluctantly gives up. It's sometime around dawn but the sun hasn't fully risen yet, just hoovering behind the trees. Dean came outside to drink his insomnia coffee in peace and now he gets this. 

"Are you fucking kidding me," Dean says. "How long have you been human? Didn't I tell you to cut it out?" 

"Apparently Jimmy Novak-"

"Dude's been dead a long ass time, nice try." 

Cas rolls his eyes. His face is scrunched up like he's in pain, like him sneaking cigarettes while everyone else should be asleep is causing  _him_ distress. 

Well, fuck that. "You're going to damage your lungs and how are you supposed to help us hunt if you can't haul your ass out of the way in time?" 

"Who said I'm hunting with you?" 

Dean blinks a few times. "Okay." He goes to get up off the porch step but Cas reaches out and grabs his arm, tugs him down. "What? Let me go." 

"Stop taking everything personally," Cas says. When he gets Dean sitting back down, Cas puts his hand on Dean's shoulder and stares right into his eyes. Cas is always one for eye contact, but Dean's about to look away when Cas says, "you told me I can't fight- stop, that wasn't a lie. I'm not mad. I can't remember where I'm going half of the time. Last night Sam asked if I knew anything about sirens and I couldn't tell him anything." 

Dean swallows, says, "well, we can-"

"I'm not sure this can be fixed." Cas takes another drag, pointedly angling his body as far from Dean as possible on the exhale. "It's okay." 

"This is not okay, Cas." 

"I know I'm no longer of use, not like this. If you could just pretend, it would just be nice to stop being reminded of it all the time." 

The right answer doesn't spring up into Dean's mind so he takes a drink of his coffee. That's all he does, really. Buys time with whatever he can so he doesn't have to talk about anything in the end. "You should be sleeping." 

Cas's shoulder shakes against Dean's with laughter. "I can't actively try to fall asleep. It goes against my very being to take time to simply... exist, but also not. So, when sleep comes, I'll accept it." He has bags under his eyes that remind Dean of his own post-hell days years ago. Dean wants to tell Cas that someday it will change. Someday he'll sleep again, maybe, but lying now would be even worse. 

"Is this why you keep sleeping in that lawn chair?"

"Yeah." 

"I was convinced," Dean starts, but cuts himself off. Cas nudges Dean with his elbow so Dean gives in, says, "I thought you missed nature or some shit and felt better sleeping under the sky." 

Cas laughs some more. "What? Why?" 

"You and your poems and the way you talk about nature and shit." Dean tries to gesture but he forgot his coffee was mostly full. "Fuck," he says, wiping ineffectively at the coffee on his word out sweats. "This day is fantastic and it's not even a day yet. Jesus."

When Dean's gotten himself back together, he looks over at Cas, watches him watch the trees. The idea of Cas being human is something that still doesn't add up; even when he was half-there, Cas still went without food, without caving to his vices. It's odd, really, to watch Cas smoke his cigarette. If Dean was someone else he would feel something, anything, besides guilt. As it is, it's overwhelming. 

"You know, we don't- you're not a, uh, thing. To us. Okay?" Dean says quietly. 

"Okay," Cas says, but he doesn't get it.

"You're not some weapon or get out of jail free card. We want you around, angel or not. You're still Cas. If you don't want to hunt you don't have to, whatever, just. You can ride off into the midwestern sunset and work at a commune- or don't. Not a commune. That seems kind of sacrilegious?" 

Cas sniffs. "I'm not going to work at a commune, Dean." 

"Good. You better not, not after you finally learned free will." Dean realizes he's gotten off track and chokes down some more of his cooling coffee. "But. If you decide to ride off into the sunset, uh, don't go alone. You're welcome wherever I am, Cas. You're family. Family sticks together." 

Since Cas is Cas, he rests his head on Dean's shoulder. "You can't," Cas says, but there's a hitch in his voice. Dean sets down his coffee, he knows the drill, and wraps his arm around Cas's shoulders as Cas starts crying. Dean hugs him tighter when Cas does, too, and then it's just a lot. 

The sun rises some more. Dean watches it so he doesn't pull back and watch Cas fall apart inches away. It keeps going and going until Cas's cigarette burns out under Dean's boot, until Dean's given up trying to be a silent presence and started- well. 

"You would like the midwest, I think. My dad knew a guy who had a farm in Missouir, somewhere with a small town name, I forget. Guy had all kinds of farm animals. Used to make his omelettes every morning with fresh eggs, it was the shit. You could do that, if you wanted to. This guy even had bees, I remember 'cause Sam got stung. Sam kept saying bees can tell when you're afraid. Makes since Sam got stung. 

"But it was hot as fuck in the middle of nowhere summer and dad kept vanishing, so I helped Sammy with his summer reading list. Later he tells me it wasn't for school, which, the dick. It was some e.e. cummings and Faulkner bullshit. I got my fourth beer and was about to go off except the guy's wife comes out. She was pregnant, I think, in a striped shirt and sunhat. I don't know why I remember her but I do. She was stunning, Cas.

"She talks with us and says she loves poetry, so, at sixteen, I memorize this one poem. The 'lady, i swear by all flowers' one? You know it. Lady even brought out lemonade. We all sat around while the chickens ran loose and I think it was the first time I really, really wished we could have stayed in a place where nothing happened. 

"We left their farm the next day. Dad probably drank too much and yelled at the guy, who knows. Before we left I walked to their chicken coop- Cas, you know eggs can be different colors? Well, it's you, I know. But they were blue and the lady handed them to be in a carton to take. She said if I ever needed somewhere to spend the summer, I knew where they were." 

Dean stops. Cas holds still where he's pressed against Dean, no longer shaking. Dean wonders if he should move away, pull back, something. He wonders if Cas knows what comes next, because Dean has no clue. 

"You didn't go back," Cas says into Dean's shoulder.

"Nah. Dad smashed my eggs before we left and I forgot the town's name, can't even remember the lady's, but," Dean shrugs, "We could try. Go back there once this settles down, see if anyone needs work, spend a couple of weeks just- Cas." 

Cas makes an encouraging noise. 

"Don't go. Don't go until we figure something out and if we can you need to stay and if we can't then stay anyway, Cas, you don't have to be alone. If you want to leave I'll go with you. Just don't go."

"Where were you two hours ago," Cas mumbles. 

"Just. We'll fix this. Or we'll make it work. Okay?"

If Cas wrapped any tighter around Dean, Dean wouldn't be able to breathe. Dean rubs Cas's back awkwardly and hopes it's not weird but then again, what's Cas's comparison? Except Dean can think of some, and he tries to stop that line of thinking. 

"I love you," Cas says. Dean still can't look at him. "And I know you don't so-"

"I love you, too," Dean says, because life is short and Sam spent three hours last night trying to have an actual conversation without yelling, and Dean realized some things. "You're just full of waterworks today, huh?" 

They sit through the sunrise, until Bobby  opens up the door and yells out he's making breakfast. 


	2. a cemetery, somewhere

"You know," Dean says, conversationally, throwing another shovel of dirt out of the way, "I think you were wrong. This is totally a graveyard."

Sam stops digging. "Really, Dean? We're having this argument again?" 

"Why'd you stop?" Dean stops, too, because he's not doing a one-man show. "C'mon. We have to dig up this Francis fuck before they decide it's time to be a dick."

Sam rolls his eyes but starts again. "Every time we dig up a grave you always do this crap." 

"Sorry, didn't realize you hated using words correctly," Dean says. 

"Okay. I'll bite. Where's the church?"

"Uh," Dean says, "what?"

"Where's the church? If this is a graveyard, where's the church?" 

"There's that Lutheran down the road." 

"Is this connected to it?"

"Isn't everything connected, Sammy?"

Sam's dirt keeps getting closer to Dean, until he just throws it all on Dean. While Dean sputters, Sam says, "A  _graveyard_ has a church. It's literally the yard where bodies are buried. This is a  _cemetery_. It's just some land. So there, Dean, keep digging." 

Dean does, but only because it will make this go by faster. "Weren't you saying language evolves with us, or some shit?"

Whatever amazing answer Sam had is cut short by the flickering of their cheap electric lantern dying. Everything becomes lit up by the vague brightness of the crescent moon and the street lamp rows over, past the fence. Dean wipes the sweat from his brow and thinks,  _shit, i have to climb that again_ , before he's on the dirt in the hole they dug, clutching his bleeding head. 

"Goddammit," Dean says. He removes his hand to judge how much blood (a lot), if he should get up (not wise), and what to do (gank them). The shuffle up is hard. He thinks he hears Sam outside somewhere, but he can''t see from the spinning. 

"Dean, dig," Sam yells. There's a gunshot, and then he yells it again. 

The woozy feeling of fragile stability Dean ends up with does not lend itself to grave digging. Dirt swims when he shovels, somehow above and below and beside and on him, a twisting illusion of dark shapes. 

"Dean," Sam yells. 

"Dude whacked my head, hold up," Dean says. There's another shot above. He tries to go faster. 

The worst part out of all of this is that Francis was a loving partner before his death. Then the whole death bitters the ghost thing goes down to send him into the usual vengeful wrath of loneliness and desperation. Earlier, Castiel said he thought it was interesting that love made ghosts stick around, only to destroy what made them stay. 

"So it goes," Dean had said, but Castiel stared blankly back. "You know, Vonnegut? Your man? Did you even read  _Slaughterhouse Five_ last week?" And Castiel had said, "I am on Kerouac right now, as I previously told you," which was enough for Dean to deal with that he let it lie. 

Dean finally hits the bottom, his shovel hitting solid. "Throw me some," he starts, but Sam's chucking the lighter fluid towards his face before he finishes. He meant to be up there faster, but alright. "Warn a guy," he says, hauling himself up. 

Sam shoots again. "He's getting faster." 

"Okay, okay." When Francis' body gets doused enough, he lights the match. The whole grave lights up ("Use enough fluid, Dean?" "Fuck off, dude.") and the ghost of Francis fades out of existence one last time. 

They stand over the body like a couple of idiots, but Dean's head throbs and the first is bright enough to counter that, or something. Dean doesn't know what to think about it. "Dude got me in the dead. This isn't bad, is it?" 

Sam tips Dean's head to the left. "Not bad, we can clean it at the room." 

"You know," Dean says, after the fence hopping, when they're almost to the Impala, "I said earlier I missed these gigs. Don't know why I said that. Always end up fucking proving me wrong." 

"Oh when will the Winchester boys learn," Sam says, slinging his arm around Dean's shoulders. 

Dean tries to shrug him off. "Get off me, bitch. I'm injured and you're leaning on me? What kinda- stop, fuck, Sam!"

Sam takes a few unsteady steps with Dean off the ground. "Dude, you're heavier than last time." 

"I will kill you," Dean says. 

"If you keep moving I'll drop you."

"I will strangle you with my hands right now." Dean tries to break his hold, but Sam sways dangerously. "You better not fucking drop me." 

"If you would stop making me," Sam says, laughing. His shoulders shake under Dean, and despite it all, Dean can't fight back a smile. Sam hasn't laughed like this since, well, the whole world ending. It's been months, hasn't it? Time never moves right after Hell.

Sam sets Dean down when they've stopped laughing. Dean slugs Sam's arm, hard, swearing and kicking at dirt. "Anyone ever tell you who much of an idiot you are?" 

"Pretty sure it's just you." Sam grins under the night sky and looks content, finally. 


	3. granby, colorado ?

They run out of money, or that's what Sam claims when Dean wakes up pulled off to a stretch of dirt alongside the road. 

"If we're broke, the fuck is this," Dean says. 

Sam throws the beat-up tent they keep for deep woods shit on the ground. "They have free campsites up here. We'll just stay for a few nights while we figure out what's going on."

It sucks, but it sucks less than sleeping uncomfortably in his baby. Dean gets out and stretches his stiff limbs while Sam wrestles with the tent. "It's your idea, Sammy," he says when Sam tries to rope him into helping. "And I have to take a piss, so. It's either here or out there."

"Two hundred feet from our campsite," Sam says. "Away from water, too!"

"Okay Ranger Rick." Dean stumbles over the thick wildlife that starts as abruptly as it ends in the dirt; suddenly he's knee deep in flowers with rigid stems up to his calves. He steps carefully until he spots a worn down path of flowers. The trail leads down the hill a ways. Dean nearly offs himself shuffling on the slope when his foot slips on a rock. "Jesus fuck," he yells to nothing. 

There's a section of trees up ahead, so Dean stomps his way through. He unzips and looks up and that has  _got_ to be a joke. Except he's already pissing and the elk are lounging with their heads slanted away from him, all six of them with their wide pointy antlers. 

Somehow, the return trips takes no time at all. Dean's convinced he's never walked that fast from anything that wasn't supernatural in his life. Sam barely has any of the tent up when Dean finishes his ascent. 

"You have a good time?" 

"There were a crap ton of elk down there," Dean says. 

Sam perks up, poking his head over the start of the tent. "Really? Was it cool?" 

"Uh, I guess." Dean scratches the back of his head, considering. "I was worried they'd see me and charge me."

"I think that's just a moose," Sam says. 

"Well, I wasn't going to find out." 

"Help me put this up before they're gone, I want to go see." 

Dean steps on, following Sam's bossy directions with some serious restraint on his part. He only yells twice. When they were younger, dad always set up the tents with Sam and made Dean make a fire pit. Dean's better with fire. 

"Looks decent," Sam says. 

Dean steps back to look. "Isn't that too close to the ledge? I step out at night and I'm falling down the hill." 

"Okay, let's shuffle it." They grab the sides and half drag half lift the tent until the flap faces the Impala. There, Dean can see if anyone tries anything with his baby. They throw the sleeping bags inside and zip up the tent. 

"You still want to see the elk?"

"Unlike you, I have an attention span longer than thirty seconds, and I happen to like nature," Sam says. "For as much driving as we do, we never stop at the parks." 

"Yeah, 'cause it's dumb."

Sam rolls his eyes. "Whatever, let's go." 

Dean leads Sam carefully down the slope, warning Sam of the rocks he nearly missed earlier. The brush scrapes at his jeans and Dean figures they'll have to wash everything later, again. Fantastic. All for some dumb elk. 

They reach the cluster of trees Dean hid behind. Sam peers around one tree slowly while Dean mimics him on the other side of the path. Sure enough, still six elk lounging in a field. 

"I didn't know males banded together this time of year," Sam says casually, like they're watching fucking National Geographic in a motel room. "Wow. That's pretty cool." 

"You done?"

Sam steps on a twig that snaps loud and dramatic. They pause, balancing on the edge of stillness that settled over the clearing. One elk lifts up his head and looks around. Then it stands, and while Dean's trying to come to grips with having to shoot a nonsupernatural being today, it takes two steps and sits back down. 

"Well," Sam says. He grins over at Dean. "They're amazing." 

"Sure." 

"Dean, are you afraid of them?" Sam laughs, starting to head back up the trail. 

"I have a gun. I'm not afraid of anything." Dean bends down to grab a rock, slightly bigger than his palm and chucks it off to the side. It snags on the undergrowth and sends birds flying from the low branches of trees. 

Sam says, "shit!" and starts running. Dean barely gets it together to stop laughing and walk after him. 

They met back up at the campsite, with Sam pacing the small area not taken up by the tent. "I thought it-oh. Dead. You asshole. I honestly thought," Sam says. "What if you'd spooked the elk?"

Dean shrugs. "I would've ran after you?" He walks over to the small dirt area a few feet away from the tent. Someone set up rocks around it, neat and the same size. John used to do that. He would make Dean find all the same size rocks so the circle looked perfect and the fire couldn't go over. 

He's deciding between starting a fire now or waiting until it's not the middle of the afternoon when his phone starts ringing. It's surprising he gets service out here, but it's Cas calling. He always seems to find an exception. 

"Hey," Dean says. 

"I am in Los Angles," Cas says. There's wind noise in the background and the typical static Dean associates with Cas's travels. "Earlier I was in Kansas."

"You seem to like Kansas."

"There was a bee keeper's funeral this morning. Bradley Miller had clinical depression, they said. He hated the rain and loved a bright, open day with sunflowers. It was raining until the funeral started and on his grave there were dozens of sunflowers. They said it was God's miracle for Bradley Miller."

Sam waves over at dean, and Dean holds the phone between his shoulder and ear to free up a hand. He makes the butterfly dove hand whatever and flaps his fingers. It's dumb but it gets the point across.

"God is not in Kansas, nor is he in any casual miracles," Cas says. He sighs into the phone. "This search is vexing. I have no idea what to look for or where to go. I am trying to do what I can, but it will never be enough."

"At least you're trying, Cas. That's more than a lot of people would do."

"I am not human."

"It's a figure of speech, chill."

"Alright."

Dean rolls his eyes. "Buddy, do you want to come camping with us? We'll have s'mores. You can relax a bit."

 "I killed a reaper instead of letting it take Bradley Miller's grandchild. It felt wrong, Dean. Why would God find it fit to do that?" 

"I have no idea." Since it's going to be another one of those conversations, Dean settles in on the nearby log. Usually Cas has his existential crises late at night and Dean sits in a gross motel bathtub and listens until he falls asleep. Dean's never done this awake and sober.

A horn blares states across. Cas says, "Hold on." A minute passes. Then two. Dean stays on the line while Sam fucks around grabbing sticks. "Her name was Ella Miller. She is seven and she wants to be an astronaut. I just fail to understand what it means." 

"It means you did something right."

"I have no idea what is right anymore." 

"Who does? We're in Granby Colorado at a free campsite off some road. Just come here." 

Cas coughs. Dean puts his head in his hands because that's fantastic. He loves being reminded of his failures. Cas coughs again and says, "I do not know how good of company I will be." 

"Then just show up and sit on a log, whatever."

After a pause, Castiel says, "I will be there in a while. I want to watch the sunset in Clearwater." 

"Okay." Dean hangs up and takes a deep breath, lets the conversation settle down. 

Sam gives up pretending he's doing something and sprawls out beside Dean on the log. "So, what's up with your angel?" 

"You may not want to say that around him." 

"Oh," Sam says. Then, "You want to make a possibly illegal sized bonfire?"

"Fuck yeah." Dean springs up, eager for distraction. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
